Page:The Function of Reason.pdf/55

 unguardedly stated. Einstein’s formulae are not false: they are unguardedly stated. We now know how to guard Newton’s formulae: we are ignorant of the limitations of Einstein’s formulae. In scientific investigations the question, True or False?, is usually irrelevant. The important question is, In what circumstances is this formula true, and in what circumstances is it false? If the circumstances of truth be infrequent or trivial or unknown, we can say, with sufficient accuracy for daily use, that the formula is false.

Of course the unknown limitations to Einstein’s formulae constitute a yet more subtle limitation to Newton’s formula. In this way dogmatic finality vanishes and is replaced by an asymptotic approach to the truth.

The doctrine that science starts from clear and distinct elements in experience, and that it develops by a clear and distinct process of elaboration, dies hard. There is a constant endeavor to explain the methodology of science in terms which, by reason of their clarity and distinctness, require no metaphysical elucidation. Undoubtedly it is possible to express the procedure of science with a happy ambiguity which can receive interpretation from a variety of metaphysical schools. But when we press the question so as to determine without ambiguity the procedure of science, we become involved in the metaphysical formulations of the speculative Reason.

The modern doctrine, popular among scientists,